Promising signs for Louisiana's 2017 deer season

Louisiana residents have spent the summer in mildewed slickers shaking wrinkled fingers at the sky, yelling “STOP!” But Mother Nature just laughs at our misery, sending more clouds to replace those that rain themselves out.

It’s been the wettest summer on record, and we’re sick to death of it.

But for the state’s deer hunters, the summer’s pain will be this autumn’s gain. All that rain has been like spreading Miracle-Gro on the state’s deer habitat, and vibrant vegetation means more does and fawns survive the often challenging days of summer. Also, healthier bucks tend to have more substantial racks.

How much the deer move during daylight hours once the arrows and bullets begin to fly will depend on weather, of course, but the good news is there should be more deer for hunters to see, according to Johnathan Bordelon, deer program manager for the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.

“In general, a wet growing season is good for deer in the majority of the state,” he said. “There’s a lot of habitat that’s had great growing conditions for an extended period of time, so that should bode well for deer production.

“Deer are a byproduct of their environment, and a plant’s nutritional availability is mostly in that growing tip. The nutrients there are more concentrated and more digestible.

“You think about how things grew this summer compared to a dry summer when everything gets stagnant and wilts. The quality of the forage at that point is compromised.

“In a year like this, there’s new growth throughout the summer. That bodes well for deer condition going into the fall and winter.”

That means hunters should kiss Mother Nature’s constantly crying face, especially considering the report Bordelon gave last year at this time. The previous harvest season had shown an alarming decrease in lactating does, causing the deer biologist many sleepless nights. In all but one of the state’s eight deer areas, lactation rates had fallen below 50 percent, which indicated more than half the state’s does had not successfully reared any fawns.

But lactation rates rebounded during the 2016-17 season, Bordelon said.

“That was pretty encouraging because the previous year, they were just so low,” he said. “We’d never seen that before. Those were all-time lows and they were almost across the entire state.”

According to the official 2016-17 deer report produced by the department’s Wildlife Division, lactation rates last season were above 50 percent in six of the eight regions.

Bordelon said lactation rates are the only index the agency has to measure productivity, so biologists rely heavily on it.

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The abundance of hogs in Louisiana continues to be a concern for department deer biologists. The invasive animals destroy deer habitat and drive away the native animals. Deer detection rates are about half what they would otherwise be in areas where hogs occur, according to the department’s report.

Louisiana’s hunters harvested 131,000 hogs last year, which is just slightly less than the recorded deer harvest, the report states.